Festivals
Weekend of Fire 2026: Four Ribbons, an Eating Contest, and the Makers Who Made the Trip Worth It
Jungle Jim’s International Market runs the biggest hot sauce weekend in the Midwest. The 15th Weekend of Fire, July 25 and 26, 2026 in Fairfield, Ohio, put roughly 400 sauces on the tables across three tasting sessions. We drove up from Miami with the full line, a banner, and a box of ribbons from other years, and came home with four more.
The results
- People’s Choice, 1st Place: Piñazo. Voted by everyone who walked the floor, which is the one you cannot lobby for. Pineapple, Fresno and habanero, a little Carolina Reaper, on a pineapple-juice mojo base.
- Best Hot Sauce, 2nd Place: Matanza. The habanero and Reaper sauce, judged by the panel.
- Best Hot Specialty Sauce, 2nd Place: Best Day Ever. Mango and habanero.
- Best Booth, 3rd Place. For the setup itself.
The official list is on Jungle Jim’s site and the full recap, with photos, is on barbaromojo.com.
The Inferno Taco Challenge
We also presented one of the Arena of Fire eating contests. Identical tacos loaded with our sauce, first to finish wins, no scraping, no outside drinks. Jason Fivush won, Ashley Schnetzer and Krista Bozacki took second and third, and each got a custom 3D-printed trophy. The tacos were, by Mario’s own review after the contest, Matanza hot and genuinely good. Rules and video are in the taco challenge recap.
The makers who had a weekend
This is the part a company blog usually skips, and it is the part a sommelier cares about. Pandemic Heat ran the table: 1st Best Hot Sauce, 1st Best Booth, 2nd People’s Choice. Stanky Sauce, the Orlando brothers, took 1st Best BBQ Sauce. Bindu Bites placed across three categories and, on top of that, lent us hands at the booth when the crowd hit. All three are on our Makers page, and all three are worth your money.
What we learned from 400 sauces
Three things. First, the People’s Choice ribbon goes to balance, not heat: the crowd voted for the sweet-and-sour one, not the hottest. Second, extract sauces are easy to spot after twenty bottles because your palate stops working; the makers who use real peppers stand out by the end of a session. Third, a booth is a tasting room. Pour in heat order, explain the base, and people remember the story with the sauce.